By Angel Smith
NEW CULTURE
"Miss, I stayed up all night finishing that list. Now I'm ranked 21 this week!"
"I finished my list on my phone…I downloaded the app!"
"My mom asked me why I'm always on that green site."
"Ms. Smith, will you refresh the leaderboard?"
"Oh we'll have [that other school] beat by the end of the day!"
The testimonials are countless. We never would have imagined a site so unassuming would forever alter our school's already unique, academically competitive culture. At any given time of the day, you could zoom into any of our high school classrooms, and find scholars on their laptops, phones, or other devices – surprisingly – logged into their Vocabulary.com accounts and working on vocabulary lists: Not Candy Crush or any other game, but Vocabulary.com!
How did we manage to create this culture?
Vocabulary.com made it easy, but I knew I would have to perfect this to make the most of this resource in order to sell it to the campus, especially since we introduced it in the middle of the year. So I researched the site. I clicked on every hyperlink and found endless opportunities for competition. BINGO! The culture of our campus is so competitive (it's all boys). Our scholars LIVE for competition. That would be the key.
When I set up my classes, I actually added my own children to see how it worked. I also added myself as a student so I could practice lists and see what access I really would have. I started mastering words, and was literally hooked. My nephew was preparing for the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and I thought, "Surely there's a list." After all, this site has EVERYTHING! I searched. SCORE! My nephew got set up for ASVAB.
THE BUY-IN
From the teachers
Once I got the hang of it, I actually created classes for the entire campus and added teachers as students. Within 24 hours, I received an email from our then-Latin teacher. She apparently had worked overnight finding endless opportunities for engagement for her middle school scholars. She admitted, "I've struggled with the vocabulary building on the derivative side…It's not very interesting. What I like [about Vocabulary.com] is that I could create my own lists from my chapters. I found that my students were getting it on both ends. Not only were they now knowing terms I hadn't been able to get students to learn for years, it reinforced their learning of English vocabulary as well. It was exciting being able to collect grades for Latin terms I've never been able to tackle."
Another colleague pulled me aside in the hallway. "Come help me with my classes. This is going to cut out a lot of time for biology terms!" She too was hooked.
The people I really needed to be hooked were the students. That didn't take long at all, once the guys started seeing their rankings within the class. At the same time, I learned about the Vocabulary Bowl, and then I saw our school's rank for the week, for yesterday, and today. Who was working? It was happening in lightning speed. Alfred was happening. He was ranked in the top 10 – of ALL students competing everywhere. No way! The guys became fascinated with the national competition. They were sold. I saw students working through the night. This was too exciting.
But there was a problem: We didn't have full access. I found loopholes to be able to give grades. But we were still so limited. I then began to harass Vocabulary.com! They guided me through the process and convinced me (which took little work) that I needed to speak with my principal about purchasing.
From the principal
First of all, we had to get our principal to purchase the subscription. In order to convince any parent to purchase something, the child has to anticipate every single question or roadblock. So we went to work in a similar fashion. I told the students what Mr. White would want to see it to believe it -- that Vocabulary.com was worth purchasing. Again, within 24 hours, four gentlemen were ranked IN THE TOP TEN – nationally! This was insane! When the superintendent of the district "likes" a Vocabulary.com celebratory Tweet, the principal is sold on the idea and the product! He made the purchase and the rest is history.
REFUSE TO LOSE
My classes began like this: students asking, "Ms. Smith, let's see where we are." Vocabulary Bowl rankings stayed on my board. Some scholars constantly refreshed my screen. They now had personal vendettas against students from Colorado, Houston, New York, and Oklahoma! Second Period students would come back at the end of the day to see if we had progressed. Scholars were staying after school to work, so the After School Program asked me to make a class on Vocabulary.com for them. Though I teach high school, I was setting up accounts for 6th and 7th graders by the dozens! "Oh we got this, Miss!" they shouted when I told them about our school making the Top 10 in Texas! The scholars worked to win badges for themselves, the classroom, their pride, the campus! One teacher had apparently assigned a list that was "too long." The guys figured out themselves how to break it up.
We also received an email from a principal at another campus in our district that said, "It's on!" They tried to beat us, for maybe a couple of weeks. I'll admit, sometimes it was a little intense. Arguments ensued. Our scholars simply refused to lose!
OLD CULTURE MIXED WITH THE NEW
Our campus is divided up into "prides." The pride with the most words mastered received dress-out days. The academically competitive nature of our campus ate up Vocabulary.com, and it became the way we operated as a campus. Students were downloading the app so they could do it when they were bored! Scholars called me "the Vocabulary.com lady," but the title was well-earned! I had to stay at least three lists ahead of my students. (I was competing myself.) We were reading a novel and Vocabulary.com already had vocabulary lists for it in their list library. The classroom was 100% engaged. I had students create pictorial representations of their favorite words; we did presentations. Students actually KNEW what they were talking about.
Green signs and certificates were posted all over the campus! I started "The Millionaire Club" for those, well, with millions – of points that is! The treat these gentlemen received was worth their efforts. A pazookie! No gift card. No money. They were working for the ultimate prize…bragging rights in the Top 10. We made announcements in our morning meetings, and students were losing their minds seeing our campus in the rankings. And when Vocabulary.com contacted me to let me know about the school's inclusion in the company's Monthly Vocabulary Bowl Top 20 Round-Up video, I knew we were doing something big! Imagined over 200 kids losing their minds, screaming, jumping, cheering, high-fiving, "dabbing"—not because we'd won a championship football game, but because we were mentioned in the Vocabulary.com video! Our principal was proud. THIS is what he had always envisioned for this campus: Young men in "the wrong zip code" once again gaining both local and national respect.
Thank you, Vocabulary.com for making this year amazing for us. This tool reignited our campus and "…made vocabulary so much more available to everybody." –Weaver
